King Lear

I congratulate Paata Tsikurishvili on a brilliantly reimagined King Lear along with the splendid Synetic theatre company.  Bravo.

Putin: Freedom Fighter

It’s so refreshing and enlightening to have Putin (that great humanitarian and human rights advocate) weigh in on NATO’s action in Libya. This is the man who has carried out atrocities in Chechnya. This is the man who has had political enemies either murdered or imprisoned. This is the man who called the breakup of the Soviet Union the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Yes, greater than the genocides committed b the Turks against the Armenians, the Nazis and East Europeans against the Jews, gypsies, gays, etc; the slaughter of 1/5 of the Cambodian people by Pol Pot; the decimation of over 800,000 Tutsis by the Hutus; the murder of millions in the Congo; the starvation of millions of Chinese by the loathsome Chinese communists and, closer to home, the murder of countless millions in Russia and neighboring areas by Stalin, a man whom Putin has spoken of with admiration; the rape and slaughter by the Japanese in Nanking. Unfortunately, the list goes on and on.


I, for one, hope that the rebels in Libya prevail and that Gaddafi, his sons, and all his supporters are totally eliminated. I don’t, for a second, believe in an afterlife, but if there were one, I would passionately hope that Gaddafi and his forenamed brothers in horrors find a special, reserved place. We can dream, can’t we?